video: PBS and VBSTV

The Border Fence: "Is America's border fence working, or an utter waste? NOW travels to Texas to meet families on the U.S.-Mexico border who fear losing their property, their safety, and their way of life."

Illegal LA: "The "debate" over illegal immigration in the United States has always been dominated by hotheads—pissy, sloganeering loudmouths on either sides of the fence drawn together by their shared love of yelling crap on radio call-in shows and steering the dialogue away from anything approaching a solution. And since the 9/11 attacks (carried out by 16 legal immigrants and three on expired visas), the discussion has basically devolved into an incomprehensible jumble. Like did you ever see those supposedly pro-immigrant "A Day With No Mexicans" ads where everyone’s sad that there’s nobody to mow lawns or sell tacos? Who’d they get to write those, the KKK? Seriously, the whole thing just makes us want to shut off our brains and watch Reba or something. But then we remember the lives of some 12 million people hang in the balance of this pissing match (as well as the American economy, welfare, national security, etc), and it’s like, "[exagerated sigh] OK, [rolling up sleeves] looks like we’ll have to wrestle this away from the assholes after all."

In Illegal LA, VBS heads to Los Angeles, the US locus of Latin American migrants and a flashpoint for recent anti-immigrant tensions, in an attempt to suss out the full nature of la reconquista instead of just trying to yell “We’re all immigrants!/Speak English!” until it looks like we’re about to hemorrhage from our eyeballs. Check out the Illegal LA showpage for more information."

Push needed for immigration reform, By: Gebe Martinez (Politico)

The physical and emotional pain of dozens of immigrants and their children was palpable recently when a congressional delegation walked into a room at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Postville, Iowa.

The town still suffers almost three months after 389 immigrants were arrested at a local meat processing plant and then detained at a cattle exhibit hall. At this meeting with three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, their stories of inhumane treatment at work and legal injustices after the arrests came tumbling out.

There was a 16-year-old who worked on the kill floor of the plant — he was under the legal age limit for the job — who labored 17-hour shifts, six days a week, without overtime. There was a man who had lost his hand. There were women who were sexually exploited if they wanted a shift change.

In May, hundreds of federal agents stormed into the Agriprocessors Inc. plant, rounded up workers like cattle and chuted them through a pre-scripted legal process that cut off their legal rights to defend themselves against unusually harsh felony “aggravated identity theft” charges. Families are separated and women are wearing electronic homing bracelets pending the conclusions of their cases.

After meeting with the immigrants, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) had a question for presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, the Arizona senator who once worked on Gutierrez’s comprehensive immigration reform plan.

“Is this his ‘enforcement only’ plan?” Gutierrez asked chidingly. “How many more years of this do we have to have before we have comprehensive [reform]? How many more Postvilles do we have to have?”

Of course, Gutierrez backs Democrat Barack Obama for president, but he also was disappointed last year when McCain stepped back from the broad immigration plan they had collaborated on and began insisting that “border security” must come first.

But the questions should be posed, not only to McCain, but to others who have failed to step up and lead.

Obama needs to be pressed on immediate immigration fixes, and so does the Democratic Congress, which has refused to take up a big reform package until next year at the earliest.

And do not forget President Bush, who once stood for the comprehensive immigration plan until it failed last year in the Senate. Now, as Bush’s lame duck presidency limps to an end, he has turned his back to Postville while reserving his compassion for oil companies.

It is highly unlikely that Bush will grant Gutierrez’s request for a moratorium on immigration raids until a better solution is in place.

“You know who is in charge now? The Gestapo agents at [the Department of] Homeland Security. They are in charge,” Gutierrez said. “I think it is election season, and they have decided it did not work for us one way [with comprehensive reform], so let’s try to exploit it politically another way” through harsh enforcement.

Enforcement only, without also figuring out how to legalize 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country or refining the rules for employers who hire illegal immigrants, is exactly what conservatives want in this election year.

The Center for Immigration Studies, which favors strict limits on legal and illegal immigration, recently concluded that, in addition to a sinking economy, “increased enforcement seems to have played a significant role” in reducing the illegal immigrant population over a nine-month period ending in May.

The accuracy of the center’s calculations were highly criticized by immigrant advocates, but the center stuck to its argument that “muscular enforcement” can “induce” illegal residents to return to their home countries.

Heeding the criticism that immigration enforcers have unnecessarily disrupted families, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is testing a 17-day program in five cities that asks 457,000 non-criminal illegal immigrants who ignored deportation orders to turn themselves in. Coordinating their departures with ICE will “ease their transition and minimize the impact of their removal on their loved ones,” the agency said.


Legal family members of the illegal immigrants are invited to leave the country as well.

The plan would be laughable if the issue were not so serious, said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, which wants an overhaul of immigration laws that combines tougher enforcement with expanded visa programs and earned legalization.

“Call me crazy, but I doubt that [test program] sends the message to Latino voters that the Republican Party understands the complexity of this issue and supports practical solutions,” Sharry said, referring to the competition for the Latino vote in the November election.

Postville is the poster board for the broken immigration system.

The federal government’s chase of illegal immigrants at the meat plant disrupted a Labor Department probe into unfair work and wage practices by the owners. Critics have accused ICE of being more aggressive about prosecuting minor immigration violations than punishing employers.

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union found a government “manual” given to lawyers assigned to defend the workers. The package included scripts for plea and sentencing hearings, which the ACLU said resulted in undermining the immigrants’ ability to understand the charges against them and receive full hearings.

Filled with fear, most of those arrested agreed to waive their rights, plead guilty to lesser charges and spend five months in prison before being deported. The alternative was to spend at least six months in jail while waiting for a trial, risk being sentenced to at least two years in prison, and still be deported.

Gutierrez likened the process to indicting a person for murder without any evidence. In this case, where many are claiming innocence of the identity theft charges, “we prosecuted the people we should be protecting. It corrupts our judicial system and it undermines our values.”

While Democrats plan to hold a congressional hearing in Postville next month, efforts also are underway on incremental measures to help legal immigrant workers and their employers.

Fixes to the E-Verify electronic employment verification system were approved by the House last week.

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) also proposed a new bill that would invest federal dollars in English literacy and civics programs for adults and school children and give a 20 percent tax credit to employers who provide English and GED instruction.

The point of the bipartisan-backed bill is to promote immigrants’ desires to integrate in American society rather than focus on “English-only” and other aspects of the immigration debate that fuel rancor, said Peter Zamora of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“There’s hot air fatigue. Members [of Congress] now recognize they were elected to get something done, not just fulminate about a class of people,” Zamora said.

Maybe. But nothing will be done before the November elections, and not soon enough for the people in Postville.

**Story Link
**Image Courtesy of Politico

A Hispanic Population in Decline, By Nick Miroff (WP)

The family that planted corn in the front yard of their $500,000 home is gone from Carrie Oliver's street. So are the neighbors who drilled holes into the trees to string up a hammock.

Oliver's list goes on: The loud music. The beer bottles. The littered diapers. All gone. When she and her husband, Ron, went for walks in their Manassas area neighborhood, she would take a trash bag and he would carry a handgun. No more. "So much has changed," she said in a gush of relief, standing with her husband on a warm summer evening recently outside a Costco store.

A short distance away, across the river of retail commerce that is Sudley Road, Norman Gonzalez spoke of change not as renewal, but as a kind of collapse.

Business at his restaurant, Cuna del Sol, has declined 50 percent. Worse still, his extended family's slow, steady relocation from the Guatemalan town of Jutiapa to the bustling Prince William suburbs has imploded. "A year ago, I had the biggest family in all of Manassas, maybe 100 relatives," he said.

Now, Gonzalez, a legal U.S. resident, has his own list: Langley Park, Chantilly, Fairfax City. That is where his brothers have scattered, and they will not visit him. "There's too much fear here," Gonzalez said.

Since the day one year ago when Prince William County supervisors launched their crackdown on illegal immigration, the gulf between the Olivers' relief and Gonzalez's dejection has narrowed little, and possibly widened.

At least there is one thing partisans on both sides agree on: Hispanic immigrants are leaving Prince William. Whether their departure has improved the county's quality of life, or pushed its already strained economy further downward, is the new topic of contention driven largely by views of whether the presence of immigrants was a good thing in the first place.

Anecdotes of the trend outstrip hard statistical evidence, yet there are clear signs that the county's Latino population has reversed its pace of rapid growth. County officials said there are 4,000 to 7,000 vacant homes in the county. Trustee notices fill the classified section of area newspapers, chronicling the steady, staggering forfeiture of properties by homeowners with Hispanic surnames such as Mendez, Lozano, Medina and Rodriguez.

Last month, there were 776 foreclosure recordings in the Prince William County, Manassas, Manassas Park area, court records show, up from 244 in June 2007 and 19 in June 2006.

Would those homeowners have been foreclosed upon anyway, for economic reasons having nothing to do with the county's illegal immigration policies? That, too, is disputed.

"You can't attribute all of what might be negative about the economy in Prince William County to the crackdown," said economist Stephen Fuller, director of George Mason University's Center for Regional Analysis. "But it certainly hasn't helped. Neighborhoods that have been weakened because of migration of the Hispanic community out of the county have economic consequences that show up as decreases in retail spending, rental income and potential decreases in the valuation of some housing."

That decrease -- home prices in some areas have fallen by half -- is well worth the improvement in quality of life, according to the most ardent supporters of the county's get-tough approach.

"We have far less residential overcrowding, and that was driving people crazy," said Greg Letiecq, a blogger and president of Help Save Manassas. He helped write the county's policy and has been its most vocal champion. "We'd much rather live next door to a vacant house," he said, speaking for his members at a recent Help Save Manassas meeting.

"With an empty house, there's hope that the house is going to have somebody move into it that's going to be a good neighbor, rather than an overcrowded house that is a neighbor from hell," Letiecq said, adding that his Manassas area home has dropped $100,000 in value in the past year.

The numbers suggest that tensions over crowding have subsided: Complaints about residential overcrowding dropped to 30 last month from 79 in July 2007, according to the county's Neighborhood Services Division.

While some Hispanic immigrants have walked away from their homes, others have left the county in the custody of federal agents. County jail officials have turned over 757 illegal immigrant inmates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the past year through an agreement that county supervisors approved as part of the crackdown.

Police have referred more than 300 additional suspects to the immigration and customs branch since March, when the county's patrol officers began screening for residency status.

Catching illegal immigrants has made Prince William safer, said Corey A. Stewart (R-At-Large), chairman of the board of county supervisors said. Stewart also said the county's policies have led to "a plummeting of the crime rate." Police statistics show that the county's crime rate has been declining since 2004, even as the population increased.

More importantly, Stewart said, Prince William has become a model for other jurisdictions hoping to act against illegal immigration. "We've started a wildfire in terms of other localities and states adopting similar tactics," said Stewart, who discussed the county's immigration enforcement success Tuesday with the House Republican Policy Committee on Capitol Hill.

While critics say ethnic tensions in Prince William have worsened in the past year, Stewart said he believes the debate over illegal immigration has empowered residents to speak up after "stewing" in frustration for years. "It's allowed people to discuss their feelings," Stewart said, citing a new level of public interest in local government. The board's chambers have been packed with hundreds of residents on several occasions over the past year.

"It's better for people to feel free to speak out about something they care about rather than holding it inside, and in that sense, the controversy has been good for the county as well as the country," Steward said.

Paying for the crackdown has been an ongoing source of tension, and supporters have long maintained that the county would save money through a decreased need for English classes for students who speak another language at home. After years of steady increases, the percentage of students enrolled in English as a Second Language classes appears to have peaked.

In September, the number of students with limited English proficiency, not all of whom were Hispanic, was a record 13,404 in the county school system. By the end of the school year, the total had fallen 4.7 percent, to 12,775.

Then there are the many smaller, symbolic signs that the county has changed in the past year. Rodeo-themed Latino festivals at the county fairgrounds, once a summer staple, have been canceled without explanation by organizers. The El Primero Mercado supermarket on Centreville Road is now a Shoppers International store. And several county services, including drug-treatment programs and in-home care for seniors, now require proof of citizenship.

Starting this month, for example, a county-funded house-cleaning service for the elderly will make sure all recipients are legal U.S. residents.

Such restrictions may not keep illegal immigrants out of Prince William if the steep decline in housing prices eventually lures legal and illegal immigrants back to the county. And advocates said Latinos have learned "clear political lessons" in the past year.

"The community has learned that votes matter," said Mauricio Vivero, director of the Ayuda Business Coalition, which has lobbied legislators and has run commercials on CNN warning other municipalities of the economic consequences in following Prince William's lead.

Vivero said that fewer than half of the Latinos in Prince William who were registered to vote in 2004 did so. In November, he predicted, "there will be a much bigger turnout in Northern Virginia, and [Prince William's crackdown] has helped push it."

**Story Link
**Image Courtesy of By Carol Guzy (WP): "At a meeting last year, immigrants ask questions about the crackdown. Since then, the Latino population has declined and foreclosures are up."

On the Morality of Immigration, By Andrew Leonard (Slate)

Some statistics on population density:

Germany -- 600 per square mile
United Kingdom -- 600 per square mile
Japan -- 830 per square mile
Netherlands -- 1200 per square mile
Bangladesh -- 2600 per square mile
The United States -- 80 per square mile.

Based on these figures, Mathias Risse, a professor of public policy and philosophy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, concludes in "On the Morality of Immigration," published in the March issue of Ethics & International Affairs, that "the United States is severely underusing its chunk of three-dimensional, commonly owned space." From which it follows, argues Risse, that it is unfair for the U.S. to restrict immigration, legal or illegal, across its borders.

This is a perspective one is unlikely to hear espoused by presidential candidates in the U.S., no matter how liberal their views on immigration are. For one thing, it requires that one think about the world as if it was collectively owned by all of humanity, rather than divided into nasty little nation-states dedicated to protecting their most cherished NIMBY values with armed forces, fences and elaborate visa regulations. It is hopelessly utopian to imagine that national politicians would ever make decisions on topics as explosive as immigration policy on the basis of what would be best for the world.

But even as one shakes one's head at the uber-ivory-tower-ness of it all, one can still admire the sheer courage of such a stance. Risse argues that "as long as a country underuses its resources and refuses to permit more immigration in response, illegal immigration cannot be morally condemned."

Indeed, he turns the whole concept of fairness, as it is normally applied to the question of illegal immigration, completely on its head.

To speak of the United States specifically, one might also argue that the opposition to illegal immigration is based on commonly accepted notions of fairness -- including the notion of due process -- which loom large in the American psyche. For example, searches on Google using the keywords "wrong," "illegal," and "immigration" delivered a number of American Web sites on which the unfairness of illegal immigration was emphasized. Illegal immigration makes a mockery of those who abide by the rules, so this argument goes. To pardon illegal immigrants would be unfair because it lets them get away with their offense on the basis that they have succeeded thus far. This standpoint, however, presupposes that immigration is indeed a matter for the respective country alone to sort out, and that the "insiders" are entitled to determine how many and exactly who enters their country. But the argument offered here implies that this is not so. If would-be immigrants are being illegitimately excluded, one cannot complain that they are violating due process if they come anyway.

I'm going to amuse myself right now by imagining the sight of Lou Dobbs' head exploding after reading that last paragraph. Of course, the right to decide "how many and exactly who" enters their country is one of the foundational benefits of having a nation-state in the first place. Maybe someday this will no longer be so. Maybe the challenges of climate change and the constraints of finding enough food and water and clean air for nine billion people will force the world to deal with all its problems in a fashion that puts collective welfare above the interests of any isolated community. But we've got a ways to go before we get there. And is that John Lennon on the piano I hear in the distance?

**Story Link

How NOT to link the environment, population control and immigration

From Feministing.org:

From a half-page ad in the NY Times:
One of American's Most Popular Pastimes. Americans spend a lot of time in their cars. Not because they want to. But because of massive traffic congestion. And almost daily gridlock. For many people, commutes to work and school and daycaer can take up to three hours a day. According to traffic management experts, it's only going to get worse if our population continues its present growth rate. In many American cities, it's the same stress with our schools, our emergency rooms, our public infrastructure, even our water resources. A majority of Americans agree that runaway population growth threatens their quality of life. But with US Census projects indicating our population will explode from 300 million to 400 million in thirty years and 600 million in 2100, quality of life for future generations will be gone unless we take action today. The Pew Hispanic Research Center projects 82% of the country's massive future population increase will be a result of immigration between 2005 and 2050. And for every four new U.S. residents whether from births or immigration, approximately three more cars are added to our roads, increasing gridlock, energy use and greenhouse emissions. Together we can do something about it. We're the nation's leading experts on population and immigration trends and growth. Visit our websites to learn more and find out how you can help. Because wasting hours in your car is one pastime you can do without.

The organizations sponsoring: American Immigration Control Foundation, Californians for Population Stabilization, Federation of American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA and Social Contract Press.